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My point of view is strictly referring to the U.S… I don’t see a problem with income equality. I’ve worked many, many jobs in my life with people from different social classes and noticed that most people who complain about their poor income deserve what they get. There’s the Internet, libraries, all these resources to learn and improve youself. You could read books for free at the library, watch lectures for free online but these people would rather watch sports, tv, movies, Netflix, ect ect, then complain when they are poor. If automation is becoming popular, than learn how to code. And not just learn it, be the best possible. Someone I know, is making 6 figures after learning Linux and passing some tough IT certs, because those skills are in demand and some liberal arts major is not. Most people deserve what they get.

I disagree that technology has replaced skill. It has replaced low skill labour, like autoworkers or McD’s cashiers. True trades and artisans will always exist. I also disagree that many low income people “deserve what they get.” Growing up poor gives you far fewer opportunities. If everyone had an equal playing field until age 18, then I’d agree, people get what they deserve. But the playing field isn’t equal at all. But ending automation isn’t the solution to that, ensuring all kids get good education is.

Ok, so Bloomberg != Itera after all.

I’m with geo. No doubt income inequality is a serious issue, but Bloomberg is falling into the “lump of labor” fallacy. Making education more affordable and more easily accessible than the mammoth white elephant universities we have would be a nice start.

The trajectory I in vision is that automation is here and is going to get bigger. It will both make many wealthy (think neo plantation owner where the is automation instead of slave labor) But of course this will also cost many their jobs. However the wealthy will now have the potential to support a larger and more highly paid services and culture industry. Meanwhile, the transition will be full of turbulence

We could also incentivize abortions for poor people so they naturally shrink away.

People in the past have come to the U.S. (I mention that because that is all I know) with no money, who can’t speak english, and they end up fine, some very wealthy. I believe the problems started when social programs began to be introduced to help level the playing field. Look at each wave of immigrants from way back till now and see their level of success compared to the benefits they received. I wouldn’t be suprised to see an inverse relationship. These days, you have so many resources if you want to learn. This morning, I sat and watched youtube video after youtube video about the industry I’m covering, for free. Then, some time this weekend, I’m going to stop by the library to check out a pricey book that amazon recommended to me. Then after all that is done, I go out. How many poor people do that? You ask one (I used to be one btw) what’s the last book you read? No clue. But you ask them about sports/entertainment/whatever, they are an expert. If you want to see truely poor people, they are in the 3rd world with no running water and zero access to information. They would swap spots instantly.

Well, that’s messed up!

Especially because along with greater automation, the population in general will have to satabalize or even shrink.

However, if equality can reamain a value human society, the increased wealth and room for luxury will be there to form a space for the rise of the artisan. This could be the rebirth of craftsmanship, artisans, and things actually being made well again.

To diverge even further, the handmade and craftman style industry will come full circle and eventually compete with the goods of the automation industry.

+1. working 2 jobs, taking care of family, paying mortgage, no time to watch coursera videos or go to library is not what people deserve because they were born poor.

now if you are sitting on your couch doing nothing then its i a different story

is the american dream over for non skilled immigrants?

The american dream requires an advanced degree in a STEM field if you are coming from abroad.

The problem is that the number of jobs that genuinely require higher education is in decline, and if you spend years training yourself for something that becomes automated or where the delivery method shifts radically, you are now vastly overqualified for jobs that pay sh!t and underexperienced for anything else that requires higher thinking (where they’d rather hire a new graduate who they can work to death over someone who is older and retrained themselves). Couple this with the fact that the few remaining fields that aren’t automated are going to have a glut of labor trying to knock down that door, and the wages of those fields will be driven into the mud, too.

“Give them more education and they can find a job” sounds great, but the hiring mangagers aren’t buying that, because so many of them are simply overpaid box-checkers who are about to be automated (taleo, anyone??) anyway.

Yes it’s a problem, and saying that it’s only the low-education jobs that are being automated is burying your head in the sand. The low-education jobs are getting automated first, but there’s no reason to think it is going to stop there and the computing power and sophistication is growing almost exponentially.

And the positions that are non-automatable (a robot that says it loves you is just not as satisfying as a flesh-and-blood person that you’ve genuinely convinced to love you), are going to have wages driven down.

So, basically, if you need to earn a living by selling your labor, you’re pretty much screwed. If you earn your living by collecting rents from deploying capital or rents from access to political power, then you’ve got something that can be leveraged. That’s why the US will eventually look like Russia, but in poorer taste.

So with education, you either need to be one of the 100 best people on the planet (figuratively), or you better be ready for minimum wage. Because no one wants to hire a smart person for a position that doesn’t require brains.

Why would this be the case. When more and more services and goods are standardized and made though automation, that would increase the value of goods and services created by actual humans. Those wages would go up. (Think…mass produced wall art from pottery barn vs. a painting from a fine artist…standardardized and cold architecture created by robot construction vs. a home built by skilled craftmen with intricate detail.

The value will increase somewhat, but the number of people pushed into those industries will push wages down. There will still be celebrity providers who can command high premiums, because humans like to brag to each other and so a cultivated exclusivity will have cachet, but this is by definition only possible for a tiny fraction of the people providing it, or else it wouldn’t be exclusive.

A useful example are the non-chic massage parlors here in New York (let’s assume legitimate massage here). It used to be that the going rate was $70 per hour. It’s also clear that even though Homedics and companies like it have machines that can massage you, and those are better than nothing, a real human being that can feel where the muscles are knotted up and such is qualitatively better, even before the satisfaction of (again, non-sex here) human contact enters the equation.

However, the price has gone down over the years to $60, $50, and now I even see a guy handing out fliers on 77 and Lex (an expensive area of town) for $40 per hour. As massage has become more acceptable, it’s more highly valued, but the number of providers has also increased dramatically such that the price has been driven down even in sections of town that have astronomical rents. This is the sort of thing that’s likely to happen to interior designer, artists (most of whom struggle to begin with already). These jobs will exist, but they are not likely to pay all that much better than burger flipping or whatever replaces it after automated burger flipping comes online. Or home health care… the demand is surging, and providers have those who need it more-or-less over a barrel, and yet the profits go to the insurance companies and personnel managers (who will be automated too, so ultimately it will go to shareholders), not to the actual home health aides, most of whom (in my experience) are struggling with two jobs to make the rent.

That said, there are still places on the upper east side (and elsewhere) where the prices are three to five times higher. They have managed to cultivate exclusivity, but their clientele is necessarily the people who can afford luxuries of that price. If labor is paying squat, that’s not going to be a lot of people, but the people who make out like gangbusters are going to want to go there and name drop because humans like to brag.

You are right, Bchad.

I think the only way the future is going to work is with less people. There will be lesser consumption of basic goods (due to less consumers). However there will be greater consumption of special services and culture due to greater wealth/ individual. ( I am making the assumption that greater resources/indivdual could potentially translate to greater wealth/ individual).

The problem that you mention (too many individuals pushed into a limited labor space) is a problem of too many people. It is not a problem of the value of the labor.

A good massage therapist could move 100 miles out of NYC, pay less than half for rent and make more on an hourly basis. I know most of the people on here don’t understand what it’s like outside the finance centers, but it’s really not that difficult to make ends meet if you have some minimal skill and are willing to work.

Michael Bloomberg is a globalist neocon! There is so much wrong with all those quotes cited.

We do not need more public policy to address incomes. We need less! As government grows, the country becomes less wealthy because governement is not a productive machine. Slash government and watch real productivity and wages grow. This was the recipe for the early 1900’s America, the greatest wealth creation machine seen in recent history. Immigrants left socialist countries with welfare and minimum wages to come the the wild west America for the chance to obtain a better living standard.

Venezuela and Argentina were once very rich countries with limited government. As governement grew and social policies expanded, the broad population become less wealthy. And today those countries are collapsing.

On the opposite end, look at Singapore. Very limited government, no minimum wage, yet the median wage is around $60,000 USD!

The answer is so obvious. I don’t know why people think more regulations are needed.

i love this guy!

it’s never a problem of population. malthus thought we was on point when he made that call 200 years ago when the world population was 1/7th of the current population.

you’re looking at it as a closed system. old jobs will be replaced with new jobs. it is difficult to tell what jobs will become prevalent 30 years from now because you would have to predict exactly where technology will be 30 years from now, and i’m not even talking about uber and easy to predict situations like that. i’m talking about small technologies that you would invent yourself if you could think of it today.

the reality is that most of the jobs we hold today, by we i mean AFers, used to pay something like $500,000 (in today’s dollars) per year 30 years ago. technology has made it so that you don’t have to be a genius nor the product of nepotism to break into this industry and offer some good and somewhat unique investment ideas or advice. but now you’re lucky to make $100,000. eventually, wages for junior finance monkeys will start at $40k and top out at slightly above the median, similar to many engineering fields, and to get near six figs you’ll have to be uniquely different and bring skills that others don’t, like always.

it is likely that many more people will be employed in the leisure and food service industries than today. specialization in those fields may develop as even poor people get motivated to jump out of planes or climb mountains.